Annie Dillard - Total Eclipse

I read Total Eclipse last night at my kitchen table. American Idol songs were static in the background, I never watch the show, but it had been turned on and then abandoned by Sutter, and failed to be turned off. The whole time while I was reading Total Eclipse I was a little sceptical of the profound impact Annie Dillard was trying to explain. I finished the short chapter as the last girl of American Idol was eliminated and she had to sing a goodbye song.

I put the book down and decided to watch this poor girl. And she was really not very good, in fact I don't know how she got so far in the competition, I wouldn't know, but she sang a Miley Cyrus song. (The only Miley Cyrus song I like is a mashup with Biggie Smalls, Party and Bullshit in the USA.) As she sang, not very well, about having to move another mountain I couldn't help thinking about the Total Eclipse, and the corona, and little specs of featureless people standing atop hillsides, enduring the moments of totality. I don't remember really thinking about it, just little images in my head....and as this girl sang I teared up, and when her voice caught a little, I wailed. I was choking on my sobs and wiping tears on my scandia down blanket. I had never seen the show, had no attachment to her, but watching her devastated me. I hope this doesn't say too much about me because while Taylor is so moved by a great poem, I am shattered by American Idol......I am not worthy.


Is there a correlation between my sobbing and Total Eclipse? Maybe not. or maybe. Either way, the part of Total Eclipse that seemed like the dark epiphany moment, the horror, the terror, the end all, the still point, the nothing, the empty........

"The second before the sun went out we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding
at us. We no sooner saw it than it was upon us, like thunder. It roared up the
valley. It slammed our hill and knocked us out. It was a monstrous swift shadow
cone of the moon. I have since read that this wave of shadow moves 1,800 miles
an hour. Language can give no sense of this sort of speed- 1,800 miles an hour.
It was 195 miles wide. No end was in sight- you only saw the edge.......We saw
the wall of shadow coming, and screamed before it hit." page 25

Two things we very interesting to me, besides the sinking feeling that formed in my throat and the imagined tunnel vision I might have, as I imagined witnessing such a thing, the two things...."language can give no sense" and "you only saw the edge." The ineffable experience of watching darkness sweep over daylight and wipe out existence is something Annie Dillard did so well. I wanted to be sceptical, but she explains her experience in so many directions that I get a sense, but I still just don't get it. I can only imagine. I probably imagine wrong.

"No end was in sight - you only saw the edge." (page 25 from the above passage) - In class we talked about the corona, the edge is the interesting part, and I think this edge of darkness sweeping the sky is interesting. What is the difference between "No end in sight" and "you only saw the edge"? Normally I think the edge indicates an end, but not in this case.

Although I have many passages that I love from Total Eclipse (starred and/or underlined) that spoke more to me than the words, I will shorten this and tell you the last thing I underlined,
"One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief." (page 28). Epiphanic moments are too much to endure for so long. It would be too exhausting to be a person who is optimally aware of the world all the time. We have to process the experience, so to do that we must turn away, and let it soak in for however long it takes to understand the moments.....hours, days, or 2 years. As Dante washes in the River Lethe, after his journey through hell.